Yes, I'm on beta 5a. Thanks for the info about changing how quests work. I can see the logic, but I didn't see that change in the changes file so I figured something was broken. Anyway, once more unto the breach!
* I took a down staircase (350' -> 400'), and the game actually hung for a couple of seconds, thinking about <i>something</i>. I can only assume that it had to retry dungeon generation a bunch of times. Weird. No quest on the level, by the way.
* Have stat potion rewards been made more common? Previous versions, I expected to get money for my first several quests; this time, I've gotten stat potions. Not that I'm complaining. Half-troll rogues start out with some significant stat deficits...
* Every once in awhile, I miss the ability to turn on "doors stop running". Particularly when I encounter a loop in the dungeon that has a single doorway in it, where I want to search for more. This eventually becomes irrelevant once my characters get reliable door detection, but in the interim it's quite annoying.
* Magic mapping still maps the entire viewable window.
* Are you sure that digging isn't harder than it is in Vanilla? It took my half-troll rogue, with a strength of 18/50, 196 turns to dig through rubble. Granted he was using a dagger, but I did some digging earlier with a glaive (weight: 19) and it still took ridiculously long to clear rubble.
* A jammed iron door that I tried to break down a dozen times without success...was taken down trivially by a tiger.
More to come; this character's just getting started.
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Please just use "p". There was request of most of my dedicated playtesters on the NPP forums to prevent initiating purchases by "enter". Atter you press p, you can use enter and escape to handle most of the follow-up promots.
Also, please make sure you have the latest, beta-5a. It was uploaded about 5 hours ago. Beta-5 had a serious flaw in that all of the monster damage messages were scrambled up. (It's amazing how one missing comma can destroy the playability of an entire game.).
The links are:
source:
Windows executable:
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Okay, finally got time to check this out, and I can't seem to accept quests. I rolled up a new character, went to the guild, selected the "Monster or Unique quest" option, hit enter, and nothing happened. I thought maybe it had something to do with my level, so I wizarded myself to level 50, but I still can't take the quest. What's going on here?Leave a comment:
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NPP 0.5.1 beta-4 are up. Fixed many bugs and issues. 2 main new features are detection radius is now a circle rather than dependent on screen size (a mix of how it works in OAngband and Vanilla), and when you examine a weapon you get more information about damage per attack.
This should be pretty close to the final 0.5.1. It has been thoroughly playtested and there shouldn't be only minimal issues in terms of bugs or game balance.
The links are:
source:
Windows executable:
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Glad to hear about those changes. I'm beginning to suspect that the non-drawn tiles have a similar root cause as the improperly-displayed accented characters. If they've fixed that for Vanilla then you might consider stealing the fix; I remember seeing a bug report for 3.2 for accented characters on OSX but I can't remember if the fix was simply to turn them off...
I'm on vacation right now, so I can't play, but when I get back I'll get you savefiles for improperly-displayed tiles and disturbing wallwalkers.
That great-wyrm quest was a bit after refusing an archlich quest, so yeah, my reputation had dropped, though it had been at Heroic for several quests by that point. Mostly I was just ranting that the guild doesn't know legendary when it sees it. What you could do is set a target difficulty for the quest based on the danger level of the monsters being fought (using the monster threat values used to calculate the value of slays -- Vanilla has code for this). Then you can base the fame improvement on the perceived quest difficulty. This should work for everything except the vault quests, which I generally find to be easier anyway (to the extent that I always take them when they're available).
From "That cuts your fame almost in half, and greatly reduces the quality of your rewards from that point on." -- my assumption was that quest rewards were based solely on your reputation, but are you saying that refusing quests affects rewards beyond just chopping said reputation?
Regarding the lingering effects: it'd be nice if beneficial / coaligned effects didn't disturb you, and if harmful ones that hit you had a message to go with them. It took me awhile to figure out why I was randomly taking a half-dozen damage.
Thanks for being so responsive to my feedback! It's great to be listened to.
And thanks for making the variant!
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Beta-4 is coming out in a day or two & has two more of your suggested features. I added detection so that it is a set range rather than the whole screen (although it is more like Oangband than Angband), and inspecting a weapon gives more information about its combat damage. Not quite as detailed as Angbands, but that is because in NPP there are more factors that can affect the amount of damage a weapon dishes out (for example, using a flame brand weapon is more effective when you are standing in fire.)
Yes, some spells have lingering effects, and little "aftershocks" randomly pop up later.
Staircases are placed in areas surrounded by three walls, or by another stair. So they can frequently get generated together.
Yes.
That message happens when a monster with the PASS_WALL flag (such as a ghost) doesn't set off the trap. I changed the message to "passes through your trap.
The game does do this, but not specifically for pits/nests. The game would get real messy when all that oil catches fire, and then so much smoke is given off that the player is bombarded with messages about breathing in smoke.
I can't re-create this. It has been unchanged for a long time. They should only interrupt resting when they are in line-of-sight (meaning you can hit them with a spell).
All of the walls, including ice walls, ivy walls, etc.... have the exact same chance of sucessful tunneling. But the lighter the weapon, the longer it can take. Other than that it is just random chance.
Someday I will fix this. But death molds can be your best friend sometimes.
Had you failed or quit any quests before then? That cuts your fame almost in half,and greatly reduces the quality of your rewards from that point on.
Good observation. I will look into this. Thanks.
Another good observation. I am thinking of a little fame boost for harder quests. By far the hardest an undead themed level (you would have to kill around 100 black reavers and archliches. ). But 13 GWs of power should qualify as well.
THis is another one I can't re-create. If you notice this again, a savefile would be a great help.
It all depends on whether you ever failed a quest, or abondoned one. That is a big step back in player fame.Leave a comment:
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Completely agree. I forget who on the forums deserves credit for originally saying this, but in a full game of Angband, a 1% chance of failure in your escape plans is a guarantee you will eventually get killed.This is slightly off-topic, and you're probably already aware of the mathematics, but nonetheless everyone needs a reminder now and then
If your teleport spell has a 5% chance of failure and you cast teleport about 100 times over the course of a game, your odds of failing twice in a row (at least once, possibly more times) exceed 20%. That's a huge risk to take if death is on the line. If you're super teleport-happy and use the spell 200 times over the course of a game, your odds of double-failure increase to more than 35%.
Finally, if you already failed casting teleport once then it is not a 1 in 400 chance of failing again. It's 1 in 20, which is too much of a risk when death is on the line.
Of course when you have no alternative escapes then sometimes you just gotta roll the dice and take what's coming to you...Leave a comment:
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@Derakon - I am quite glad Anssi Ramela joined in the conversation. He is *THE* NPPAngband expert, having played it NPP than anyone else (even more than Diego or I). He has contributed a respectable amount of code and about 25-30 monster races as well (including the Ainur races that are getting frequent praise). He has won at least 8-9 times, and well, I could go on, but my point is if his advice contradicts mine, take his every time.
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Yes, yes, relying on a 5% fail to save your life is a classic blunder. We all know this. I won't claim I was entirely rational by that point in the fight; Sauron had me too peeved.
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In addition, this is possibly a case where the Angband RNG's deficiencies are highlighted - I believe it has a higher chance of successive extreme values. So a failure after another failure may be a greater than 1 in 20 chance.
Of course, I say this without having done any of the maths or even looked at the code...Leave a comment:
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This is slightly off-topic, and you're probably already aware of the mathematics, but nonetheless everyone needs a reminder now and thenI failed two spells in a row here, so this was a 1 in 400 death.
If your teleport spell has a 5% chance of failure and you cast teleport about 100 times over the course of a game, your odds of failing twice in a row (at least once, possibly more times) exceed 20%. That's a huge risk to take if death is on the line. If you're super teleport-happy and use the spell 200 times over the course of a game, your odds of double-failure increase to more than 35%.
Finally, if you already failed casting teleport once then it is not a 1 in 400 chance of failing again. It's 1 in 20, which is too much of a risk when death is on the line.
Of course when you have no alternative escapes then sometimes you just gotta roll the dice and take what's coming to you...Leave a comment:
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In my experience, Sauron is actually a bit of a pushover. I'll go against the grain and use letters for bullets on my list of things I consider important for fighting S and M.
a) First of all, with enough preparation, dealing with every deep unique is not mandatory. Just preferable. Avoiding being in several dangerous monsters' LoS simultaneously is paramount, but a suitably *Destruction*'ed or Stone to Mud'ed environment with Phase Door and Teleport Other has often been enough for me. It just means you can't teleport yourself, which is not a problem since teleporting at that depth is too risky anyway. It is possible to take advantage of the fact that Morgoth is faster than the monsters that he summons.
b) Against Morgoth, getting his mana down is huge. This applies to Sauron to a lesser extent, depending on how fast you deal damage. The amount of mana drained by throwing a Potion of Drain Mana is quite small so I don't collect them for the final fights, but I'll carry a few with me if I randomly find some.
c) The best way to get Morgoth and Sauron low on mana is to deal damage to them as fast as possible. The objective is to force them to spend as much of their mana as possible on healing instead of damaging you. IIRC, summoning also uses a lot of mana, so I fist pump whenever they summon something I can banish.
d) To maximise the damage I can deal, before the firghts I gorge myself on Speed, Heroism, Berserk and Prayer effects for any non-mage character. Marginal advantages are still advantages and several marginal advantages add up to a significant advantage.
e) To me, two tries at a 5% spell is not a 1/400 risk. It is a 1/20 risk of having to bail out with *Destruction* or use another 0% fail method of protecting myself.
Otherwise it's all about having a plan and the tools to implement it.Leave a comment:
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From my reading of the code, Sauron has 197 mana and most of his attack spells cost about 5 mana. If we assume that each attack spell deals 300HP in damage, that he casts nothing but attack spells (i.e. no summoning), and that he never recovers mana, then that means that you have to tank 11700HP in damage before you can consider trying to deal with him. IIRC you said that hitting him with a potion of drain mana drains 10% of his current MP? So if I had saved ten potions for the fight then I'd be able to cut that down to ~4200HP (assuming I could hit him with all ten potions before he started casting, mind you). This is still high enough that I can't see how you're meant to deal with him without stocking up a huge pile of healing potions.
I have to say that I'm not a fan of this concept. I've proven I can survive indefinitely at the deepest parts of the dungeon, but now I have to go scum levels to kill uniques just so they can't make the final fights complicated?2) It is absolutely mandatory to kill every deep unique (2000' and below)before taking on Sauron or Morghth. Scrolls of summon unique help speed up this process.
I could have used the ?Destruction I was carrying, but I didn't because I didn't want to lose the progress I'd made against Sauron so far. In fact, I failed two spells in a row here, so this was a 1 in 400 death.3) I personally think even the most powerful character should always carry around scrolls of teleportation. Even a 0-fail spellcaster with every resist can get stunned.
From my reading of extract_energy in tables.c, the difference between +38 speed and +48 speed is 41 energy/round vs. 44 energy/round, i.e. 7%. That's pretty damned marginal. That said, I'll freely admit that I hadn't carried most of my consumables into the fight, and I should have retreated and come back with the contents of my home plus some !Heroism.4) Potions of speed do help, even at +38. Even if they only increase your speed a minimal amount can turn the tide to you attacking, Sauron healing, you attacking again, etc.... This helps drain their mana.
My current setup optimized covering resistance holes (most notably, getting both sound and darkness in the same kit), getting acid immunity, and as a distant third getting combat bonuses. Cubragol was arguably the best launcher I'd seen all game; the only ones that came close were Heavy Crossbows of Extra Might. And this is the best ammo I'd found; by my calculations it would do 285 damage/shot.5) I wish you had posted the character either here or on the NPP forums asking if you were ready for the big fights. I think you would have gotten a bunch of useful suggestions. I would have recommended wearing Feanor and wielding a much more powerful bow or crossbow. And some powerful ammo. Even Paladins can dish out a tremendous amount of damage through archery. Then you could have phase doored around, not letting him touch you, which would have made your rods useful.
Immunities were not easy to get; I couldn't wear Thorin for a long time because it didn't cover electricity resistance (which you'd think would be easy to cover elsewhere...not so much), and Narya and Nenya, which I got quite late, were the only other two sources that weren't on an otherwise-crappy weapon.6) The character is powerful by Angband standards, but NPP is a little different. Immunities are easier to get in NPP because they are practically manditory for the deep fights. Not so much to ward off damage but to protect and preserve your inventory.
I mostly find it an annoyance that StM is practically mandatory to make any reasonable headway when digging. With this character I routinely had to spend several hundred turns tunneling to clear a single granite square, which doesn't compare favorably with tunneling in other variants I've played. I can't find where in your terrain.txt tunneling difficulty is stored so I can't tell if you've actually changed this or if I'm just somehow imagining things.I am working on your other suggestions for the game. Tunneling shouldn't be much different. Why not stone-to-mud? And what disturb options do you have that monsters out-of-LOS are disturbing? Is disturb_move turned off?
My disturbance options were set like so:
disturb_move: NO
disturb_near: YES
disturb_detect: YES
disturb_state: YES
The disturbance pattern I was seeing can definitely be characterized as "if there is an awake monster that can move through walls, then I am disturbed." Makes resting near ghosts an impossibility.
One other thing while I'm thinking about it: if you have a specific ego-type set to squelch, but the "rare equipment" set to not squelch, then rare equipment with that ego is still squelched. I'm not certain if that's correct or not. *shrug*
Anyway, time to see what Beta 3 has in store...Leave a comment:
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Sorry to read about your character dying so close to the end. NPP is a different game than vanilla and requires a different strategy to win. I looked over your character dump, and here are my thoughts:
1) Monster mana does run out, even Sauron and Morgoth. When it does, both Sauron and Morgoth are borderline helpless. Step one to beating them is draining their mana, then you concentrate on draining their HP.
2) It is absolutely mandatory to kill every deep unique (2000' and below)before taking on Sauron or Morghth. Scrolls of summon unique help speed up this process.
3) I personally think even the most powerful character should always carry around scrolls of teleportation. Even a 0-fail spellcaster with every resist can get stunned.
4) Potions of speed do help, even at +38. Even if they only increase your speed a minimal amount can turn the tide to you attacking, Sauron healing, you attacking again, etc.... This helps drain their mana.
5) I wish you had posted the character either here or on the NPP forums asking if you were ready for the big fights. I think you would have gotten a bunch of useful suggestions. I would have recommended wearing Feanor and wielding a much more powerful bow or crossbow. And some powerful ammo. Even Paladins can dish out a tremendous amount of damage through archery. Then you could have phase doored around, not letting him touch you, which would have made your rods useful.
6) The character is powerful by Angband standards, but NPP is a little different. Immunities are easier to get in NPP because they are practically manditory for the deep fights. Not so much to ward off damage but to protect and preserve your inventory.
I am working on your other suggestions for the game. Tunneling shouldn't be much different. Why not stone-to-mud? And what disturb options do you have that monsters out-of-LOS are disturbing? Is disturb_move turned off?Leave a comment:
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